First published 2008
Jordan Belfort starts hustling Italian ices on the street. By the 1990s, he runs Stratton Oakmont, a massive brokerage firm on Long Island where young stockbrokers worship him as their king. Belfort makes thousands of dollars per minute during market hours. He spends it just as fast after dark. His binges sink a 170-foot yacht and rack up hotel bills worth $700,000. He leads his crew of fast-talking, hard-partying traders on increasingly reckless adventures. Meanwhile, his wife and children wait at home as his empire grows more unstable. Belfort transforms from an ordinary guy into one of America's most notorious financial kingpins through brilliant but corrupt stock manipulation. His meteoric rise from street vendor to Wall Street wolf becomes a tale of unchecked greed and excess that eventually brings everything crashing down around him.
Genres: drama, business, crime, non-fiction
Vibes: fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: rags-to-riches, rise-and-fall
Setting: Wall Street, Long Island
Period: 1990s
528 pages · Paperback · Bantam
Content warnings: addiction, drug-use, explicit-sexual-content